Learning Game Design: as a job or a hobby
Udemy
Course Summary
The process of specifying and modifying the way the game plays: not programming, art, marketing, licensing, sound, etc.
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Course Description
[Note: I opted out of Udemy's deep discount marketing, so this class will never be offered for 75% off or a flat $10, let alone free. On the other hand, this course is priced as a book might be - there's certainly more words, counting bonus material, than in the average book. If I priced it as a typical Udemy course and used their marketing, it would be about $150. So you're already getting more than 67% off . . .] This course is designed for people who want to design games - video or tabletop - but lack information about what is really involved and how to go about it. It's not rocket science, but commercial design is a JOB - one that cannot be done by rote, there is no "Easy Button". I'm not here to encourage you, or entice you to read, I'm here to inform you. I assume you have the motivation to learn how to design games, you just need to know how. And that means you need to do it from start to finish, to complete games rather than merely start them.
We'll discuss the process of game design, the possible structures in games, the best way to start learning game design, what makes a game good (there's a great variety of opinion about this), ways to provide a framework for your design efforts, ways to keep records of your work, software to help you learn. Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions (such as the notion that it's all about a great idea, or that everyone who counts likes the same games they do), and I'll try to clear those out of your way.
This is not a comprehensive class about game design as a whole, it is a class about learning game design. That's a process that goes on throughout a game designer's career, but it starts here. This class will never be offered for free or at very deep discounts. That is disrespectful to me and to the students who pay full price or near it. Review at Jeffro's Space Gaming blog: tinyurl.com/o6t95kn Review at Alan Paull's blog: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/26361/learning-game-design-a-udemy-class-by-dr-lewis-pul Udemy reviews: Jimmy Voskuil? (https://www.udemy.com/u/jimmyvoskuil/) ,? 9 days ago Great course! Good for the starter like myself :) Currently I follow this course (at 75% so far) and its a great course for beginner game designers like myself. The course is not a 1 click button and after your a game designer no (please send message if you found that course btw) but it gives a good frame work, hand outs, ideas and background about both video games and tabletop games. So if you wanted to start with game design this is a great first step. The teacher is clear and good to follow ( I am a student from The Netherlands and got no problem following this course). Also the course got some assignment I strongly recommend doing them I finaly found out why I Hate Monopoly :) Cheers all hope this was usefull, Jimmy == Mark Frazier President Designs In Creative Entertainment, LLC. An ideal introduction to game design Dr. Pulsipher distills the critical elements of designing games into manageable chunks. This is an ideal course to take if you are interested in designing games, regardless of whether you intend to pursue it as a career or not. Much of the material covers the specifics of the process of game design, but there is alot of prime advice to be had in the lectures on creating the right conditions for quality feedback and on understanding the realities of the publishing business. A must-have certification if you're serious about designing, and I'd say, even publishing games! == Jeffro Johnson? (https://www.udemy.com/u/jeffrojohnson/) ,? 3 months ago Pull Back the Curtain on the Game Design Process I know that in the past there's only been a couple of times that I managed to blunder into some sort of prototype, but I had no clue as to what I was doing that was different than usual. Well... the material in this course nails down precisely what to do to get over that initial hump. It can save you from countless false starts and dumb ideas. And unlike other commentary on the design process, Dr. Pulsipher provides a whole menu of things that you can do in each phase of development. This material reveals more of the dials and knobs of gaming than I even knew existed. And being aware of these things was enough to shift me from having an occasional promising idea to having more ideas than I know what to do with. Even just playing new games now, I cannot help but see "behind the curtain" and into the dilemmas the designers were facing. If you care about game design and actually do the work that this course entails, you are in for a profoundly illuminating experience.
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Course Syllabus
- How This Course Works
- What you'll discover
- Introducing the Teacher
- Interaction
- Assessment
- Game Design is Education, not Rote Learning
- Course Length - Depends on How Long Your Game Takes
- Student entry survey - 10 questions, voluntary
- The Main Assignment
- Supplemental books and other materials
- What game design is - and is not
- Yes, there are fundamental things to know to be a game designer
- Definitions
- Six Words about what a Game Designer Is/Does
- Stay Behind the Curtain
- Is game design about "mind control"?
- Monopoly Exercise
- The fundamental difference is NOT video versus tabletop
- Make Money? Maybe. Get Rich? Most Unlikely.
- Dreamers
- Typical Illusions of Aspiring Game Designers
- Reasons to Design Games
- Is it really work?! Fun as a hobby, work when it involves trying to make money
- Meaningfulness?
- My take on Monopoly's problems
- The best ways to learn (other than this course!)
- Your Goal: COMPLETE Games
- The Quickest Way to Learn Game Design
- Gamemaker and other game engines
- Gamemaker demo
- Creating Levels and Making Mods
- Traditional Games are NOT a Good Guide
- A Monopoly "solution"
- When you first do any complicated thing, you won't be good at it
- Formal Education (a degree?)
- Play Lots of Games? Maybe.
- Self-assessment: Definitions and the Best Ways to Learn
- Getting Started
- An Exercise in Awareness
- The Idea is NOT the Game - Part 1
- The Idea is NOT the Game - Part 2
- Innovation is Highly Overrated
- Origins of Games
- Making Your Very First Game
- Using Someone Else's Intellectual Property? Avoid it!
- Games, Puzzles, and Contests
- "Atoms" and "Game Loops"
- Games Need Simplicity, Puzzles May Benefit from Complexity
- Quotations related to game design
- The System and the Psychological
- Three Kinds of Games: Math, People, Story
- "Rules emergent" versus "Progressive"
- Avoiding player elimination
- Protecting Your Intellectual Property?
- Designer Diary: Dragon Rage tabletop game
- Example of additional voice notes for tabletop War of the Roses game
- Example of initial voice notes for tabletop War in the Abyss game
- Example of initial notes for fleet battle game resembling Spelljammer battles
- Where are you with your game design? (1)
- Self-assessment: Getting Started
- The Process of Design
- Stratego Exercise Introduction
- Talent versus Technique
- The Artisan, the Engineer, and the Mimic
- Game Design Documents and Problems
- Mind-mapping example
- Game Concepts, Treatments, and other Marketing Documents
- Sample Video Game High Concept: Fury of the Northmen
- Sample Video Game High Concept: Dragons Rage
- Models, Abstractions, Simulations
- The Nine Structures of any Game
- Some Essential Questions
- Chess Exercise
- Systems Analysis of the Design Process
- Other views of the process
- Phases, three acts, or five, or nine, or Hero's journey
- Research
- No Room for Perfectionism - a Game is Never Really "Done"
- Conceiving a new game
- What Makes a Game Good?
- Stratego: Good and Bad
- What is the Player Going to DO?
- The Target Audience
- Kinds of Fun
- Varying Aims of Designers - not Just "Fun"
- The Role of Story
- Theme and Atmosphere
- Pacing
- World Building and "Realism"
- Evaluating Game Qualities
- Symmetry and Asymmetry
- The Evolution of Video Games Part 1
- The Evolution of Video Games Part 2
- The Evolution of Tabletop Games
- The evolution of video games more than a year later
- 21st Century Game Characteristics
- All I needed to know about game design I learned from Dungeons & Dragons
- Risk Exercise
- Self-assessment: the design process and what makes a game good
- Where are you with your game design (2)
- Making a Playable Prototype
- Making a Paper Prototype
- Making a Software Prototype
- Some examples of prototype construction
- Characteristics of Boards
- Example of a mapping program - Campaign Cartographer
- My take on the problems with Risk
- Game Interfaces
- Feedback to the Player
- An example of interface improvement in a tabletop prototype
- Some Risk exercise "solutions"
- Are you ready to make your prototype?
- Playtesting: the Heart of Game Design
- What Playtesting is NOT!
- The Process of Playtesting and Modification
- Stages of Playtesting
- Have you playtested your prototype solo?
- What to Watch for in a Playtest Session - Part I
- What to Watch for in a Playtest Session - Part II
- Kinds of Playtesters
- What to do with the Feedback
- Emergent behavior and Playtesting
- Game Balance
- Self-assessment: making a prototype and playtesting
- Other considerations
- How are Level Design and Game Design Related?
- Marketing, Licensing. Agents, Consultants, Funding, Publishing
- Marketing Yourself
- Hits, Virality, and "fan" Toxicity in video games
- Free-to-play Games
- Six different goals for commercial games
- "Discoverability"
- Fallacies You Won't Want to Fall Into
- Legislating against behavior as opposed to changing the gameplay
- Conclusion
- My "upgrades" to Stratego
- Organized Practice
- Your Game Design Portfolio
- Coping with Destructive Criticism
- One page "what's important in game design"
- Maxims of Game Design
- Where are you with your game design (3)
- Conclusion
- Are you a game designer or a fiction writer?
- "Platforms"
- Monetization of F2P Games
- Mobile Games
- A trend in games: Avatars
- Gamification (Really, Scorification)
- Why Roguelike games are making a comeback
- Nearly 500 slides used in the screencasts, downloadable
- Student Completion Survey (voluntary, not anonymous)
- Self-assessment 5
- Log of major additions to the class
- Bonus Material
- "A tax on people who are bad at math"
- Why I wrote my game design book
- Results of a game designer survey from late 2012
- Introduction to other Bonus Material
- Origins 2007 Process of Designing a Game
- Origins 2011: Business of Game Design
- Origins 2011 slides: Business of Game Design
- Origins 2011: Starting a Game Design
- Origins 2011 slides: Starting a Game Design
- Origins 2011: Completing a Game Design
- Origins 2011 slides: Completing a Game Design
- UK Game Expo 2011: Of course you can design a game, can you design a good one?
- Origins 2011 slides: Of course you can design a game, but can you design a good
- East Coast Game Conference 2012 - Managing Frustration
- ECGC 2012 Slides - Managing Frustration
- ECGC 2010: What Video Gm developers can learn from 50 years of tabletop develop
- ECGC 2010 slides: What VG developers can learn from 50 years of tabletop develop
- What makes my game design book unusual or unique
- World Boardgaming Championships Annual Game Design talk 2013
- Example of designer helping potential players (tabletop): Britannia
- Origins 2008 Breaking into the Tabletop Game Industry
- Strategic Wargame Design, talk at PrezCon 2014 (Charlottesville, VA)
- Lew's Games, as of October 2014